


The Next To Know

by Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto



Series: The Bonds Between Us [24]
Category: Star Trek Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 19:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7476444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto/pseuds/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long night.  An early morning.  And Jonathan Archer is in for a big surprise.  After that, who's gonna be... the next to know?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next To Know

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sort of sequel to "First Thing in the Morning", conceived (ha ha) at the same time, but landed, half-baked, on the back burner (and yeah, I know that's a mixed metaphor) until I was searching through some misfiled files a couple of weeks ago. So, I took it out, shook it out and here it is.

The Next to Know

2 September, 2161  
NX01 Enterprise  
The Captain’s Mess  
Seven hundred hours, fifteen minutes

It had been a long night.

Yawning, Jonathan Archer set aside the data PADD.   
That two hours of sleep hadn’t done much for his concentration. The more he stared at T’Pol’s report on last night’s gravity failure, the more the words stared back, without providing a clue as to their meaning. 

After all these years, she could still amaze him. At four hundred hours when she took over the bridge’s center seat and sent him to his quarters, she still looked as neat, crisp and alert as when she’d come on duty. Not like someone who’d been analyzing data for several hours beyond the scheduled end of her shift.

At least by then he knew her findings coincided with what Trip had reported from engineering half an hour earlier. C-Deck’s gravity failure was caused by a problem with a couple of internal relays. Time consuming to fix, but nothing complicated, he’d announced, a tone of relieved satisfaction in his voice. Now the problem was resolved, Cap’n. Repairs were complete, rechecked, reviewed. And he was off to his shower and his bed. He’d get his written report together before the eight hundred briefing. Til then, see ya in the morn… oh, right, it was morning. Well, anyway… see ya later.

Jonathan pulled the breakfast tray toward him. Good thing hunger didn’t need concentration to make its message clear. Now, where should he start? With the orange juice, the dish of mixed fruits, the golden toast with its little pot of jam (probably raspberry), or the eggs, soft poached and glistening, just the way he liked them? 

By habit, he reached for the coffee pot in the upper right hand corner of the tray, an instant before his sleepy eyes registered it wasn’t there. “No caffeine,” he’d said when he put in his breakfast request. After the briefing, if the gravity problem was, indeed, resolved, he’d grab an hour or two’s nap before resuming bridge duty. It was a pleasant thought. One he was looking forward to following up on. He yawned again.

Internal relays. That’d sounded straightforward enough. But on the way to his quarters he found himself wondering if the problem started, not inside Enterprise, but from a spatial anomaly somewhere outside her. 

Probably Trip’s mention of a shower had gotten that started. Had him recalling a long ago gravity failure caused by a hidden ship hitchhiking in Enterprise’s warp field. 

Let it go, he’d told himself as he crawled into bed, giving Porthos a quick scratch behind the ears before settling onto the pillow. This was a totally different situation. 

For one thing, this time when the gravity failed, he hadn’t been in the shower! 

Until recently, he wouldn’t have lost sleep speculating on spatial anomalies. Not like the first months after Enterprise returned from the Delphic Expanse. But since encountering one six weeks ago, the idea was right there, ready to leap from the back of his mind to the front, eager for consideration.

He hadn’t been in the shower for that one, either. Still, the thing had compromised more than a few of the ship’s systems so that after creeping free of it at barely Warp Three, they’d been overjoyed to learn NX-02 Columbia was near enough to resupply damaged equipment and help make repairs. With both crews working to get Enterprise ship shape and Bristol fashion, that had taken almost two days. 

And, okay, it wasn’t only thoughts of spatial anomalies that kept him awake. After a little while, he’d let those go, only to have them replaced by memories of how he and Captain Erika Hernandez had spent part of their off-duty time during those two days. Or, to be more precise, during those two nights.

Picking up his fork, he pierced the center of an egg and watched the yolk flow golden across the white’s pepper-flecked surface. Maybe his tired joints felt like they’d been stuffed with the grounds from yesterday’s coffee, but he couldn’t help but smile.

He forked up his first bite, then washed it down with orange juice. Ah, delicious! 

His door-chime sounded. It’d be Trip, delivering his report. Still smiling, he scooped up another forkful of egg. “Hey, Trip, come on in and…”

His words trailed off. Trip looked terrible. 

Of course, he hadn’t looked at himself in the mirror this morning, so who was he to talk? But, he hoped he didn’t have that same greenish tinge to his complexion. 

The engineer held out a data PADD without saying a word. 

The idea of spatial anomalies recurred as Jonathan studied his friend’s unsmiling face. 

But no… What he saw there wasn’t worry, only an exhausted blue gaze that seemed to have fastened itself to…

To his breakfast tray?

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “Hungry?”

Still wordless, Trip shook his head. But no doubt about it, he was staring at the plate, and the fork lifted halfway to Jonathan’s mouth. He swallowed hard once, then twice.

“You sure? I can have Chef make you up something.”

“That’s… all right… Cap’n.” Trip said with slow deliberation.

Poor guy was probably too tired to eat. Gesturing to the seat across from him with his free hand, Jonathan popped the bite of egg into his mouth and reached for the toast. He dipped it into the remaining pool of golden yolk. “Well, sit down a minute while I finish this so the steward can clear up.”

Trip didn’t sit. His stared as a bit of yolk drip, drip, dripped off the edge of the toast and splopped back on the plate. 

“Excuse… me…!” he managed, then bolted across the room, not toward the corridor, but through the door leading to the private head on its far side. It hissed shut, mercifully muffling most of the retching sounds coming from beyond.

Jonathan set down his fork. 

Should he call Phlox?

There’d been no report of illness among the crew. And, no matter how tired Trip sounded at three thirty hours, he hadn’t said anything about feeling under the weather…

The door opened. Trip emerged, his forehead beaded with sweat. But that greenish tinge had disappeared, to be replaced by a spreading red flush, and the glazed look in his friend’s blue eyes had become one of…

Embarrassment?

“Trip…?”

“Sorry, Cap’n.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Everyone feels a little off-color sometimes.”

Trip was staring at his plate again.

Jonathan braced. This wasn’t going to be a repeat performance, was it?

“Cap’n…?” Trip gestured at Jonathan’s uneaten slice of toast. “You gonna eat that?”

“No,” Jonathan shook his head. His appetite had fled along with Trip’s last little exit.

“I feel like I haven’t eaten in days!” announced the engineer. 

“Um… You’re welcome to the toast.” (More than welcome at this point he almost added.) “But, Trip, is that such a good idea?”

Trip sank into the chair, looking as tired as Jonathan felt, but not a bit queasy. Even the beads of sweat were disappearing. “Did you have a chance to look at my report?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I was a little distracted.” He gestured toward the head. “Trip, what’s going on?”

Trip’s hand hovered over Jonathan’s extra toast, but he made no move to pick it up. “I guess there’s no way around it after what just happened. Not that I expected you’d end up being the first… wait! The second… Well actually, the third… to know.”

“Trip!”

The engineer drew a bracing breath, then blurted. “T’Pol’s pregnant!”

“What?”

“T’Pol’s…”

“I heard you! Trip, that’s…” 

What should he say… “wonderful”? He didn’t know if it was or not. If Trip thought it was or not. Or T’Pol. “Are you telling me that what happened right now was you getting…?” He searched for words. 

“Morning sick?” Trip supplied, shrugging. “Yeah. It happened yesterday too. That’s when I knew.”

“T’Pol hasn’t mentioned not feeling well.”

“No. She hasn’t been a bit morning sick.”

“She hasn’t mentioned anything about her condition, either.”

“She doesn’t know yet. We were so busy last night, I never got a chance to tell her. Like I said, except for me and Phlox, you’re the first to know.”

The realities of the situation were starting to sink in. “Trip! Starfleet doesn’t look kindly on… relations between personnel resulting in… Look, I thought when the two of you told me you were bonded, you agreed to take preventive measures…”

 

“We have been. But, remember that spatial anomaly a few weeks back? Phlox told me yesterday that its radiation probably neutralized all their effectiveness.”

“Well…” Jonathan was wide awake now. He tried to clear his dry throat, then reached for the orange juice. Swigged. “I thin there are certain priorities that must be observed. Leave your report with me and go talk with T’Pol. I’ll talk to you later.”

With one more look at Jonathan’s plate, Trip nodded, rose, snatched the remaining slice of toast and left the Captain’s Mess.

The door had hardly hissed shut behind him when Jonathan hit the comm. link. “Hoshi, I need you to send a message. Urgent. Priority one, and scramble I’ve got to contact Columbia!”


End file.
